Recently Ciara Thorburn [circus artist, clown pirate (CC Member) and facilitator & instigator of such excellent things as the Spin Circus Festival & Circus Garage Sale Facebook group] did a course at the famous (or infamous) Ecole Philippe Gaulier (The Gaulier Clown School). As Ciara was doing it she posted a daily diary on Facebook which was such a good read I asked if we could post it here on Carnival Cinema so it could be saved and shared.
Thank you Ciara, for generously sharing your experience!
I hope you all enjoy,
Cheers Hamish
Day 3#
I have a table now here, Manuel now knows my order and we play pretend that I speak good French and he good English, using the few phrases we both know. Its kind of all we need anyway. I notice the pile of open sugar packets and discarded tickets have piled up again on the floor. A couple of street dwellers ask me in French for cigarettes, and young guys try to get my attention. I go inside.
I write for too long yesterday, and miss out on my own warmup time, but manage to get a few handstands in before many others arrive. Before class I chat with Nisolar, the ‘Kenyan’, she is the quietest and most pure of our class. The most proper depiction of an English lady with the sweetest accent, naturally beautiful and dressed immaculately every day. She tells me surprisingly that she writes for stand up comedy, but could never perform it herself. She writes for others. She said she is terrified of being onstage. I remember she was the most nervous to say her name, on the first day. She also tells me that she was the naughty kids in school, which really surprises me, and I’m so curious about her now. I encourage her to sit up the front of the class, so she has easy access to the stage, as she hasn’t gotten up for any exercises yet. I tell her just do it, don’t let it become a thing, just go!
Warmup with Tom Tom
I do really like Tom Tom’s classes, we have fun and there’s really nothing to lose. Kind of like a normal clowning class, it’s nice. We play Kings Square again, we start to learn there will be a routine to our warmups, which I like.
· We stand in a large circle and pass staffs side by side. We start passing them vertically across the circle. Tom Tom warns us that if we drop them, the loud crash on the wooden floor will piss off Philippe who is teaching class ‘A’ downstairs. We now all obviously care about dropping, way too much.
· Next Tom Tom instructs us on how to do a standing tip roll on the chair… unexpected, but also relevant. It’s scary for most people, so wakes us all up. Two people get injured.
· We play what I call the juggle memory game, where we roll a ball to someone in the circle and remember the pattern. Rules are added – you must say the name of a vegetable, and also walk towards someone else in the circle. It’s a coordination game, I’m into it. After about ten minutes, we never get it right and move on.
· We do a free thought exercise in duos. The ‘listener’ gives the first four words of a sentence, the ‘speaker’ continues talking with no breaks, totally improvised. The ‘listener’ says yes/no, and you have to either continue or diverge the direction of your story, kind of like accepting or blocking an offer. It was fun and high energy.
· We play prisoners or guards using this technique as conversation between the prisoners.
We do a clown exercise with Tom Tom. We play what I call ‘funny race’, starting from the curtain. Five clowns line up, and you get to take a step forward if you can make the audience laugh. Tom Tom instructs us to give space to the others, which is difficult. This is one of my favourite clown games ever, I’ve done it dozens of times. I totally suck at it here. Nobody watches me or laughs. I try a number of go to’s, I try nothing. I try to be myself, I try to make offers. I listen, I watch, I make eye contact, I try big, small, I give focus to the others, I drop my jaw, I put energy through my fingers, I take focus, I try movement, voice… a couple of individual giggles, but nothing really.
The Master
Now it’s getting interesting, and by interesting I mean, well, existential crisis. The day started off well, I was feeling fine and shook off my negative thoughts from yesterday about ‘laughing too much’ and disrupting the class, he will probably forget which one I am anyway, I tell myself. After lunch, I sit in the front row, when Nisolar enters I give her my seat and go to the back of the class.
First, he gives us some wisdom, we all listen intently to scrounge for the wisdom amongst the nonsense.
– When the clown imitates an actor, he tries as hard as he can. He takes it seriously and he does it properly. The clown never creates a mean parody.
– The Bouffon parodies in a negative/teasing way.
– The clown is always positive. As if to say ‘Now, I am an adult’, or ‘Mummy daddy look at me, I am normal’.
I sit at the back with the English soccer guy. He is acting strange like he wants to get out, I adjust to make room for him. He then asks if the back door is a way out… I tell him in not sure, what’s wrong? He says… “I accidentally brought my phone in…”. “Just turn it off!” “What if he see’s it??”…
Accompanying Phillipe’s wisdom and entertaining non-sensical rants, he gestures towards the bag of dozens of red noses on the table next to him. He goes into great detail about how to thread the elastic into the nose, and into which holes, and how we might like to celebrate getting our noses by having sex with our partners when we get home. He says we might want to use our other nose because this one hurts “NO! Eu must uze zis noss, in mai classe”. I quickly thread my nose and try it on, feels like any other nose.
We do funny race again. The same exercise as this morning with Tom Tom, it is obvious to us that they didn’t plan this. I get up for the second round, again, I try everything and nothing. I sit down. Nisolar gets up for the third round, I am relieved. She makes a great offer, a call-back to a previous exercise, it’s very funny, ridiculous and unexpected. He asks Nisolar “Why did eu stoppe?”, in her perfect British accent she responds “Well, you see, it is because Tom Tom told us to make sure we give everyone else a turn.” “WUT??” The others in the class explain that we just did this exercise upstairs with Tom Tom. “NO! It iz a race! Ze cloeun must be funnni. Ou must make uz laugh.”
I am having fun, learning, watching the others, I write in my notebook…
I’m less anxious today.
Medium clowns are medium, good clowns are also medium, bad clowns are good… they have further to go. Currently, I still understand what I mean from this.
What he says affects me less, at least I get noticed. I get nominated to be sent back because I am ‘bad’, is that good or bad to be sent back? Win the failure. Show the failure. LOOK at the audience when you fail.
We have a short break, I teach one of the young guys, Felix, some juggling tricks. We return to class and Philippe begins to give us our characters, to which we must manufacture a costume by Monday. These are determined by us lining up, and we jump turn and try to scare the audience. Philippe then judges what we look like and gives us a character. These include Godzilla, a steward, Fred Astaire, a garden gnome (I wanted that one), a viking, a nurse, a girl scout (again not me, but probably for the best), a rich girl, a hippy, princess… I get, “ze most orrible toilet cleaner at Melburn airporte”. The most horrible toilet cleaner at Melbourne airport. “OK” I say. He mentions something about allowing us to have a four-word catchphrase, he assigns some to some people, then doesn’t go into much more detail.
Here we go
The final exercise of the day, and I am somehow back in the front row, the first five clowns jump up. The exercise is to come onstage like we are putting on a children/family show. The small American girl, Josie, is one of the clowns. He is harsh with her, she is not getting any laughs. He stops her “Wut are ou doing? Zis is not funni. Where iz ze idiot oo always larfs in my classe” …my heart jumps, heads turn to me. I raise my hand, “Ah, I think you mean me?” … “Yes. Zis idiot, not even she iz laughing. Goodbai.”
I try to brush it off. I see we have fifteen minutes left of class, so I get up for the last exercise. I like the line-up of clowns I am with, though behind the wings the Venezuelan girl who is beside me retreats, implying for me to go onstage first, so I do. I often like the exchange between clowns behind the curtain just before we go on, it’s always unique and builds a type of comradery, as we both don’t know what’s about to happen. There wasn’t much of that this time.
I run onstage. I can’t remember what I did… something stupid, clapped my hands like ‘tada’ or jumped… or something. She comes out onstage behind me soon after, she speaks and says I will do an acrobatic trick and manipulates my body, then jumps over me like leapfrog from behind, I can’t see what she’s doing. She collides with my head but I am fine. Philippe stops us. Some other stuff happens with the other clowns at some point, maybe at the beginning, I can’t really remember. Though we all had some complicitae and stupidity going on, it felt good. Philippe stops us, and says about me (not to me), “Zis one… she iz like gloo. She iz zticky, no?” He asks the people around him, the Commedia trained guy, Chase, stumbles over his words and agrees with him. Onstage, I fight between real emotion and pretend emotion of dread. “She iz always stickeee. Is she stickee, or does she look like a crab?” Chase stumbles again… “She is sticky.”
Home
I go home. I make a quick Instagram post, with chocolate on my face because I immediately ate two chocolate biscuits as soon as I left. I decide after posting it that I don’t care if I have chocolate on my face. I was pissed off, I think, and confused, and analysing what just happened. I care mostly what the other people in my class think. I know he doesn’t like me now, but I didn’t know that the others didn’t either. I go home and wonder if I will cry, or if I am ok with all of this. I analyse what he means by sticky. He means annoying, he means I am always trying to get onstage, or trying to have the focus onstage. It’s the worst feeling, because I am trying so hard to find the balance between not doing anything, doing too much, making offers, accepting offers, giving focus, looking at the audience, doing gags, not doing gags, not doing anything that is too smart for a clown, letting others go first, giving advice only when asked, not sounding like a smart arse, knowing how to tip roll on a chair, and doing my handstand and juggling training in secret.
Homework
Our homework exercise from Tuesday was explained in the most confusing manner by Philippe, and most of Tuesday and Wednesday the students back and forth trying to decipher his instructions. He wants us to make a small routine, where one clown kicks the other up the bum… the clown tries to perform a gag which they think will be very funny. Obviously to me, it won’t be funny. I think this is a failure exercise. Then another clown comes in, clown number two thinks they will perform the bum kicking gag on clown number three, but gets kicked up the bum again themselves. Yes, it is very confusing, and that’s the simplified version. We are to perform the routine on Friday in class.
So Josie (the small American) and Halima (my housemate) and I form a trio. Mostly because everyone else had already formed, and I wasn’t too fussed so was late to the game. Josie comes over to our apartment and we back and forth for a while. As is with ensemble work we go around in circles for about thirty minutes, changing roles, ideas, and playing some games to try to loosen us up. The process is classic group work. I try to sit back, Josie improvises some text and refers to me in clown “Let’s bring on Ciara. She has pigtails. She thinks she knows what she’s doing”. It hurts a bit, but I try to separate the exercise from my thoughts. I like Josie. Plus, she reads my blogs.
There is no light in my room, but I don’t mind so much. It means I go to sleep earlier. As I try to sleep I overhear my housemates debriefing in the kitchen, everyone is going through this, or something, I think to myself. I put my earplugs in.
I don’t know if I should finish this second coffee. These blogs are becoming a highlight of my day, mostly because this way I can share my experiences with people who understand me, and judge me off more than three days of knowing each other. But I can feel the anxiety creeping in, so maybe I shouldn’t finish it. Its cold anyway. I get a few messages of support from friends online, most make me laugh, one makes me cry. Class starts in one hour.
Ciara Thorburn
*You can read the other days here:
Ciara Thorburn
Circus Artist, Variety Performer, Children’s Entertainer, Clown, MC, Cabaret Luminary and human being.
Ciara is a passionate, progressive and creative circus artist based in Melbourne, Australia. An avid art critic in her past life, Ciara has combined her passion for conceptual art with entertainment in an inimitable fusion of variety skill with clowning. Ciara defies expectations, using everyday objects in extraordinary ways, and has a knack for turning the mundane into the astonishing with her unique character work.
Ciara Links
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